


Like It's Hard

by physically_affectionate



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Legally Blonde AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/physically_affectionate/pseuds/physically_affectionate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk is pretty comfortable in his life, with his own apartment and a stable relationship. Dating Spock isn't easy, but Jim likes it, and as far as he's concerned, they might actually be it. His life gets turned upside down when Spock dumps him instead of proposing, for somebody more serious and less criminal. Instead of taking it lying down, Jim Kirk follows Spock to Starfleet Academy, only to meet a senior student Leonard McCoy and start battling a fellow first year Uhura. - McKirk Legally Blonde AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to tumblr user johnreapergrimm and the anon who helped with the title!

Jim sits up, pulling the sheet around him, letting out a slight groan at the pain in his quads. Leaning against the bed head, he stretches out, letting his right thigh fall out from under the sheet for a minute, a love bite starting to colourise in blasts of blue there. His head lolls back as he remembers how he got it, and remises in the fact that it is four days old. There are others, a few along his collar bones and some on his lower stomach, but they didn’t really bloom in a significant enough way.

Rolling over in the bed, still dragging the sheet with him, Jim searches for his communicator and PADD. He finds it the pocket of his running pants, beside pairs of dirty underwear. There’s a missed call from Scotty and a text from Galia; they must have called when he was asleep. Jim shakes his head - he wish it had been louder, because when there’s a call from Scotty and a text from Galia, something spectacular has to have gone down. Instead of listening in for their messages, he joint calls them, absently-mindedly rubbing at his eyes.

Scotty picks up first. “Lad, there you are!”

Jim shrugs even though Scotty can’t see him. “Yeah. What got you leaving me missed calls so early?”

“Aye, it’s lunch time now. Not so early,” Scotty says with a hint of berateion in his tone.

Galia clicks in. “Jim! Guess who Scotty and I saw this morning!”

“Wait, what were you two doing together this morning?” Jim asks, voice only just not leering, because there’s only so much longer that he’s going to be able to watch these two dance around each other. 

Jim can hear a muttered curse word from Scotty’s end and a finger snap from Galia’s. “Jim, focus.”

“Is there something you two want to tell me?” Jim teases, wishing they were video calling on their PADDs instead of just audio on their communicators.

“We wanted to tell you who we saw this morning, and maybe if you kept your wee little-” Scotty launches, way too defensively for Jim’s taste, before he’s interrupted by a squealing Galia: “Spock, with a ring, getting off from a Vulcan transport!”

Jim waits for a moment, lying quietly on his bed, letting himself process the information, before he breaks out into a smile. He’s about to reply to Galia and Scotty when his PADD goes off, notifying him of a new message. The message it short, curt and to the point, just like the sender himself.

**_A moment ago_** \- **Spock**  
 _What time does your hearing finish?_

He replies, momentarily forgetting his conversation with his friends, replying with the time. As soon as his message sends, another one promptly comes through. I’ll pick you up afterwards and then we shall go to get dinner.

“Bad boy settling down, ey?” Scotty grumbles through the communicator.

“Oh, sorry guys,” Jim says startled. “I forgot about you for a minute.”

“Well, we certainty didn’t forget about you! What was the message?” Galia asks.

“He invited me to dinner after my hearing. I think, maybe, he might propose.”

Scotty sighs. “Oh god lass, do we have to do this again?”

“Yes!” Galia squeals, causing Jim to quickly cover his ears. “You need the perfect outfit!”

—

Neither Jim Kirk or Spock had been big relationship people when they’d met three years ago, but nevertheless, the concept of being tied to one person isn’t as terrifying as it had once been. Their shared three years hadn’t been smooth, but he found himself comfortable with Spock, being faithful and the sex was amazing.

After watching his mother’s string of boyfriends and husbands potter though her life and by extension his, he hasn’t been fond of the concept of marriage. He’d seen so many divorce papers that he could probably draw a pair up from memory. Marriage with Spock wouldn’t be like that, wouldn’t be like all the train wrecks his mother had ended up in. It would be a promise that Jim’s mother had never made, and it would make Spock’s time at Starfleet easier. It would give them marriage perks when Jim goes to visit. And it’s really quite logical, when you think about it.

“This is important,” Galia starts, dragging him into one of Iowa’s only boutique shops. “The leather jacket is signature, but you need some colour! And if we choose well enough, then it can be your wedding colour. Not green though.” She gestures to herself, green body clad in a bright red tank top and black shorts. “It would clash too much.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I think I drove into the front of this store a few months ago, maybe it’s not such a great idea…” Jim says, not amused. Not that the shop attendants would know that it was him that drove into their window and then escaped - they’d done a good job at fixing the glass, especially after the rickety temporarily forcefield replacement - but shopping wasn’t exactly his idea of fun, because generally it was a sober activity. Galia laid a hand on his shoulder, anchoring him.

“Jim,” a voice says from his left, and he turns to see Scotty approaching, dressed what appears to be in clean, greaseless clothes. “Just listen to the girl. Besides, they don’t know it was you. That hearing is in two hours and by some magic, you’ll probably be dismissed.”

Jim shrugs. “Yeah, okay.” Without complaint, he follows Galia and Scotty into the boutique, leaving them at the small men’s shirt section while he checks out the smaller leather section at the back. As he flicks through, there are mostly skirts, a smile creeps over his lips as he thinks about the possibility of getting Spock to agree to a leather skirt, because that would be extremely hot - Spock would probably find it too illogical though, so he files away that thought for later on in their relationship.

A woman approaches, holding out a black jacket. “Have you seen this?” she asks, pushing it towards Jim until he’s forced to accept it. “It came in yesterday.”

He passes it over in his hands, fingers rubbing along the material, checking the seams and the label. The leather is obviously fake, and the seams are sharp with no tape or residue of tape, so he concludes that the jacket is either a knock-off or at least a year old. He thanks himself for the need to be a know-it-all, because researching leather about a year ago meant that he won the bet against his coworker at the time, but also now that he’s going to be able to call this lying woman out. (Also any knowledge was good knowledge, as far as Jim was concerned.)

“Is it leather?” Jim asks, trying to look excited, even though he knows it’s a poor imitation.

“Of course,” she answers with a toothy smile, flicking a glance over to her co-worker.

“Is there tape on the seams?”

“Of course not,” she replies as if almost scandalised by the thought. “It’s one of a kind.”

Jim hands the jacket back. “For a sharp leather seam, you’d need tape, and if this was new, the leather would be stiffer. So not only is is not new, but it’s also fake leather. Also, really? This is Iowa. We all know everything about everybody. Like for example, how that brand closed down a year ago and half the city became unemployed. So if you’re going to try and sell an old replica for full price, you picked the wrong man.” It doesn’t help that he was one of the employees laid off when the company went under.

Galia comes up from behind Jim, a hand on her hip and the other one clicking in a z formation. She’d been watching too many vintage movies lately. Not that Jim was going to verbally complain, because he secretly enjoyed watching them with her.

As they leave, Galia and Scotty beginning to look uncomfortable, with one dress shirt in tow, Jim makes a comment about the little boutique. “Well, maybe they deserved being crashed into.” Jim Kirk didn’t like being taken for a fool.

—

The good thing about dressing up for his date with Spock after his hearing is that he looks all pretty during his hearing. When he is directly accused of smashing into the boutique and causing damage, Jim doesn’t directly defend himself. Instead, he unbuttons his shirt, to the horrified and amused audience of the court, and throws it at the judge. “I buy clothes from there, see, so why would I crash into their window?”

It turns out that stripping down to shirtless isn’t an acceptable thing to do in court, but how he enjoys the ruckus it makes.

\--

The restaurant that Spock takes them to is quite low key. It’s wedged between a supermarket and a fruit shop, with big windows and a small door, and the lighting is dim enough that Jim contemplates climbing up into the roof to check out the wiring, with suspicions of it being old 2000s stuff. When Jim vocalises this thought, Spock tells him that it is illogical: “No matter how irritating the lighting is, it was manufactured that way, to try and create emotional responses. It seems to be envoking one.”

Jim tries to explain that it’s not the correct emotional response, but Spock just doesn’t understand, and guides them to a small booth at the back of the restaurant, his hand settled on the small of Jim’s back. He waits until Jim has taken a seat before he does himself, and then tries to make idle conversation. Spock asks about Kirk’s hearing, pretends to be interested in it. He asks about Jim’s job, about Jim’s cat (which he’s allergic too) and Jim doesn’t call him out on it, attributing it to nerves.

It’s not very long before Spock has ran out of topics and the patience to pretend to care.

“So, why’d you go back to Vulcan?” Jim asks, playing with the straw in his drink. He takes a sip, looking up at Spock from under his eyelashes.

“To visit my father,” Spock replies promptly, without any trace of emotions.

All the signs are pointing in the right direction, Jim decides, and if Spock doesn’t get to the point, Jim was considering doing it for Spock. Jim reaches across the table, bringing Spock’s hands between his, and Spock doesn’t draw away from such an intimate Vulcan gesture in public. Instead, he very humanly sighs.

“I think now would be an acceptable time to discuss our future,” Spock says, voice level as always. Jim nods, prompting Spock’s conversation, his heartbeat quickening in anticipation. “I find your company adequate, and we have had much fun” - tongue rolling over the unfamiliar human sentiment - “ but I would like to be a senior science officer of Starfleet and one day I would like to be a member of a flagship, and even for human standards, that it a completely different environment than Iowa. My father expects a lot from me, Vulcan expects a lot from me. I rejected the Vulcan Science Academy; I must maintain that that was a logical decision.”

“I fully support that.”

“Therefore if I want to achieve this, it is illogical to continue our relationship. I think we should break up,” Spock says, matter-of-factly, with no hesitation.

Jim, not paying attention to Spock’s words, starts to give an answer - yes, of course, very logical - but stops when he actually registers Spock’s words. He doesn’t say anything, mind and mouth temporarily stunned, until his first response is to take the upper hand. “Is it my record? You just couldn’t handle it, could you?”

Spock doesn’t reply, simply raising an eyebrow in response.

“Or maybe I was just too much for you,” Jim reasons.

Again, Spock doesn’t reply, instead starring impassively at Jim, eyes giving away nothing. It is beyond bothering, watching Spock with all his non-emotions, but it reminds Jim of why Spock chose him in the first place. Reckless, yes, and a nose for sticky situations, yes, but also a quick mind and (mostly) logical processes. He’s smart and he uses logic in a way that it attractive to Spock.

Finally, the other man speaks up, voice still eerily calm for a break up. “Although my father has given his approval of my having a human mate, it is his wish that they were less - erratic. If I want to be on the flag ship, like my father also wants, I must find a more suitable mate as I will not only be judged on my abilities, but ‘the company I keep’ as humans phrase it. There are no other viable and logical options.”

Jim’s face scrunches up in disgust at the Vulcan’s words. Of course there would be other options, Jim Kirk is the champion of other options, but Spock’s eyes seem pretty determined on that particular option as the only option. It makes Jim wonder if maybe it’s just a cover story, but even half-human Spock is too Vulcan for lying.

Jim tries to make no scene as he leaves, walking out in a controlled way with one foot in front of the other, discretely telling their waitress to cancel their food but still leaving her with a tip. He doesn’t need any scenes out here at the moment; enough of Iowa’s gossip tree was in that room, and Jim didn’t need the whole city knowing what had happened. They’d gloat at him about how they were right - a human and a vulcan can never bond, don’t be silly - under the pre-tense of giving their condolences. With the history of the old town comes the history of stickybeaks.

He makes his way down the street, counting his foot steps and keeping to the rhythm in his head. He doesn’t let himself cry, or show any facet of emotion, to the point that he could probably give Spock a run for his money. He ignores Spock’s offers of a lift; his motorbike (a vehicle that Spock has objected to on quite a few occurrences) is still parked at the court which isn’t actually that much of a walk away from the restaurant.

Spock is about to go his own way, having seen Kirk to his transport safely when Kirk acknowledges his presence. “So you’re breaking up with me because you think people won’t like me? Everybody likes me. They like me more than they like you.”

“Vulcans are -" Spock starts, his translating face plastered on, “- different.”

“Just because I’m not Vulcan, I’m the scum of the universe? I grew up on Earth, Spock, not Taurus, and I bet that that’ll be good enough for the people at Starfleet.” The motorbike starts up quickly, coming to life with a hum loud enough to act as a buffer for Spock’s reply. Jim gives Spock one last glance, eyes somehow amazingly dry, before he takes off back home.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim’s bed is covered in apple cores and empty chip packets, and he hasn’t properly moved - beyond to the bathroom and replicator - in at least 48 hours. He has completely forgone clothes, and he has no inclination to put any on. He’s watching reruns of some old-fashioned television show, and trying to laugh at the jokes which are completely old but somehow still humorous. 

The thing is, he can’t laugh at them.

There, luckily, aren’t any knocks on his door, and he remains in his blissful little cocoon where he isn’t brokenly single. 

Jim Kirk isn’t meant to stay in one spot, so matter how sad, and when he wakes up to a night sky, he lets himself stretch out on the bed. His arms accidentally knock off some rubbish off the bed, but Jim barely batters an eyelid. He’s not crying anymore - didn’t cry that much at all - but his eyes are still glazed over and puffy, he has a headache and his limbs are somehow sore from not moving.

He’s trying to reason with himself; if the Vulcan didn’t want him, than Jim certainty didn’t want the Vulcan back. He tells himself that they had never really fit together, never walked the same path to the same destination. He tells himself that never wanted forever with Spock, but this is one he can’t tell himself; he was prepared to spend the rest of his life with Spock, and hope that science would have found a way to extend human life times like Vulcan ones before he carked it. He had even thought once upon a time, quite irrationally, that Spock wouldn’t seek anybody else after his death. That he now knows is far from true.

The stairs creak as he tiptoes down them, dressed in running gear, and all the lights in the house are off. Jim gets all the way to the front door before the lights flick on behind him, followed by a whistle. He turns to see his housemate, Sulu, with a smirk and a party blower hanging off his laps, hands covered with the contents of a party popper. 

“Sneaking out at this hour, leaving your fiancé in bed? It reminds me of your clubbing days,” Sulu says through smirked lips, eyes looking at Jim’s empty fingers. Very quickly, Sulu’s smirk turns down at the corners and he begins to frown. “Where’s the ring?”

“He broke up with me,”  Jim deadpans, and Sulu doesn’t reply, instead just gapes.

Jim closes the door behind him on Sulu’s confused face, and starts making his way towards the start of his normal running track. He laps the track four times, barely paying attention to anything except the thump of his feet against the ground. Between the dark of the night sky and having have left his PADD at home, the silence around him is quite overwhelming, the stars a constant reminder of everything he had managed to lose in one night. The stars remind Jim of Spock; the man came from another planet, and will leave Jim on earth to go back to the stars. He doesn’t let himself cry though. He keeps on running, runs around the track two more times before he slows down and starts dawdling home. When he gets back, he tries to ignore the new car parked in front of his place. 

He lets himself in through the front door, and is immediately bombarded with a mix of voices. Jim simply shrugs at Scotty, Galia and Sulu, starts taking the stairs to his room in pairs, stopping at the head of the stairs. Turning, he’s greeted with the shocked faces of his three friends at the base of the stairs.

“He broke up with me,” Jim sighs, so completely drained of energy that he can’t even do sad properly, “because I’m not serious enough for Starfleet Academy.” 

Jim avoids looking at them in the eye, and doesn’t let them see him as soft tears come.

 

+

 

The next morning, all three of them are still fucking there, in his kitchen. Sulu, Jim can understand, because Sulu does live there, but the other two really have no reason. Jim does not accept their friendship as a good enough reason to be stickybeaking when he obviously doesn’t want them to be.

“Fuck off,” Jim says before anybody else gets a word in, and his tone is so aggressive that no-one is willing to challenge in him on it. He grabs an apple and stalks back to his room, pausing at the top of the stairs to hear a murmur of the conversation down stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Galia says, “but doesn’t Jim generally like to fuck things? So was that an invitation?”

Galia has been on Earth a while though, and although her knowledge of Earth languages is becoming quite extensive, she still has problems with the word ‘fuck’ and how casually it is used in conversation between them. As a group, Scotty, Sulu and Jim have spent quite a bit of time trying to help teach her how to identify how it is being used in different contexts. She still hasn’t worked them all out it seems, and really, who is going to say ‘fuck off’ to Galia in any situation.

Jim can hear Scotty explaining the meaning to her when he slams his door shut on them and the world. It rattles slightly in its frame, suggests that it may need new hinges sooner, which isn’t exactly great, considering that he’s only just making rent at the moment. Between being laid off at the leather factory and working as a part-time waiter, he’s basically skint. He’d moved from his small apartment to the spare room in Sulu’s house, and consequentially his rent had halved, but he still had rent to pay and no full-time job. Non-surprisingly, it makes sense that Spock didn’t want Jim to move in there now.

That thought sends Jim properly off the handle, because it means that the pointy-eared bastard had been thinking about breaking up with Jim for a while now. For how long now had they been sleeping together, Spock knowing that it was one of their last when Jim thought it was just the start? Jim goes for the walls, ripping down the photos attacked to it which he’d spent the last few days mooning over. He rips them all down, photos of his life over the last few years, and throws them onto the ground. He hasn’t been much of a sentimental person, but when he’d moved, Galia had offered to help pack, and who was he to say no? When she found his small collection of holos, she’d printed them and spent an hour in his room “artistically” arranging them. At the time, he had wanted to know where she’d found a proper, old fashioned printer, but now he just wishes that she hadn’t, period.

The photos that didn’t include Spock went to one side, and the ones that did became ripped down the middle. He tried not to look at the pictures more than he needs to, but his eyes catch on one from about four months ago that Scotty had snapped (actually of an engine, but, whatever) that had Jim and Spock in the background. At the time, Jim had been a bit indignant about the photo, because although they were only hand holding, he understood how it would appear to a Vulcan.

Now, all Jim can think was that Spock was a stuck up, prude vulcan. (It’s harsh, he knows, but he’s in a harsh mood.)

There’s a knock at his door. “Have you finished being self destructive?”

“No where fucking near it,” Jim yells in response, as he throws the door open to see Galia standing there, hands on her hips.

“Let’s go then,” Galia replies, tone curt, ignoring Jim’s lack of pants and messy hair.

“Go where?” Jim asked, stalking back into his room and falling into his bed.

Galia follows him in, and Jim sighs into the sheet, before turning his head to look over to see both Galia and Scotty.

“We’re going out lad,” Scotty fills him in, moving over to Jim’s cupboard to pluck a pair of jeans out and throw them at Jim. “We’ll get some breakfast, follow Galia around the shops, and then later we’ll find you a nice club.”

Jim shrugs. It’s not a totally bad idea; it’s just no where near good. “Do we have to go shopping?”

Galia replies with a firm “yes” just as Scotty mumbles a smaller “no.” He looks to Jim with Galia’s staring on his back, and then replies: “aye lad.”

“Well maybe I don’t want to go out,” Jim says, rebutting the other two’s words. “Maybe I want to go throw eggs at houses.”

“There are other, less delinquent ways to mourn a break up,” Galia says, before Jim scoffs in response. 

“I got broken up with for my delinquent ways, so I don’t see why it matters.”

“I’d rather tie you to the bed than let you get arrested again.”

Jim doesn’t even smirk, and makes no insinuation at Galia’s words.

“Shit,” Scotty huffs at Jim’s lack of joke. “We oughta just skip the day and get straight to the alcohol.”

 

+

 

Romulan ale shots are not a good idea, Jim finds out, as he ends up lying over Scotty and Sulu, head on Sulu’s thigh and feet in Scotty’s lap.

“You gotta sober up lad,” Scotty starts, “otherwise we won’t be able to go out. It’s 17:30 for god’s sake.”

Jim groans in response. “I actually loved him.”

Nobody says anything, ready for Jim to have an alcohol fuelled deep and meaningful rant to them. Sulu reaches for another drink, and Jim complains about his pillow moving, before he props himself up for another drink himself.

“I though we’d be _something_ forever. And now, we’re just nothing. He gave up on me. He was the Romeo to my Juliet.”

Scotty stifles laughter. Galia slaps him fondly, earning an eye roll in return. Neither of them have had much to drink, even though usually they’ve quite heavy drinkers. If Jim was awake, he would have noticed this, noticed the pattern of no drinking together starting to emerge, but he’s pretty much inebriated. 

“I thought, I thought,” Jim starts, voice driving off into nowhere. “I thought he loved me.”

Galia places a hand on Jim’s forehead. “I think he did too.”

“He doesn’t need that,” Scotty whispers, and Galia looks slightly distressed for a second.

“I really do not understand you humans,” she faltered. “What does he want to hear?”

Scotty shrugs, and Jim replies for him. “I wanna hear from Spock that he loves me, that he wants me back, but I’m too much of a delinquent. I need to stop being a delinquent.”

“You can’t change who you are,” Galia blurted, hand swatting up to cover her mouth. 

“Aye, lad, she’s right. You can’t change who you are,” Scotty affirms, and Galia eases up.

“He doesn’t love me like this though,” Jim says. “I wish he would have taken me to Starfleet Academy. I could have made him dinner.”

“You’re a shit cook,” Sulu slurs. “There’s a reason you don’t cook here.”

“He’s a vulcan; he don’t care.” Jim considers his words, taking another drink. “He don’t care, he never cared, did he?”

Galia, Scotty and Sulu don’t reply to Jim after that, just watching a light comedy on the television, and they don’t answer any more of his drunken ramblings.

When Jim throws up later, stomach acid burning the length of his throat, they don’t comment. Instead, Galia puts a damp cloth on Jim’s head and administers him the last hypo in the cupboard. 

 

+

 

Even with the hypo, Jim wakes up hungover. Unfortunately, he wakes up with a full memory of the previous night, slightly embarrassed by his drunken, sloppy rambling. Each minute he relives makes him groan, but luckily he was alone, face down in his own sheets. 

He remembers publicly confessing his love for Spock, Galia trying her best to help him and failing, declaring that he would have gone to Starfleet Academy for Spock, and just being overly sloppy -

And then it hits Jim.

He rushes down the stairs, nearly tripping, before finding Galia and Scotty asleep on the couch. Shaking them both awake by the legs, they both stir and when Scotty wakes, he jerks forward and sits up, bringing Galia with him.

When Scotty and Jim look down, they see Scotty’s fingers interwoven with some green ones.

Jim smirks for a second, until Galia wakes, falling off the couch with a crash and a screech. 

“Quieter,” Jim cautioned, headache coming on in an onslaught again.

Galia looks up at Jim, brushing the hair out of her eyes, and pulling her hand away from Scotty’s. “What?” she asks, obviously ignoring the sleepy handholding with Scotty.

“I came up with an idea,” Jim announces. “I’m going to Starfleet Academy, and I’m going to get Spock back.”


End file.
